The Landscape Institute announced the creation of two new fellows at its awards last week.
Diane Haigh is an architect. She was director of design review at CABE from September 2007 until CABE’s closure in 2010, when she transferred to Design Council CABE as head of CABE.
She is now an independent, working part-time for Allies and Morrison and maintains her involvement in teaching as director of studies for architecture at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. She is also a member of Cambridge University Department of Architecture’s Advisory Committee and is exploring future courses. She worked previously for Allies and Morrison for 13 years, becoming a director in 2006.
She has held research and teaching posts at Cambridge and Hong Kong Universities and her postgraduate research focused on environmental issues in which she has a long-term interest. She is also known for her book on the Arts and Crafts architect M.H. Baillie Scott.
As director of design review at CABE and subsequently at DCC, Haigh ensured the role of landscape architects in the design review process more than any other individual. She led the way in ensuring her staff thought about the balance of professional representation on design review panels and she encouraged and supported applications to the national panel from landscape architects. She invited landscape architects to many of CABE’s initiatives for which she was responsible.
Haigh is currently working to see whether a Masters course in sustainable urban design at the University of Cambridge can be established. The proposed course will seek to address the issues of rampant city growth worldwide in the context of Kyoto targets. Since leaving DCC, she has also helped with the LI Guide for Clients, acting as a client ‘sounding-board’, providing helpful and constructive feedback which resulted in change.
The second honorary fellowship went to Pam Warhurst, who was presenting the awards. She is currently the chair of the Forestry Commission, having left the founding Board of Natural England. Before that she was deputy chair of the Countryside Agency, a leader of a local authority, chair of a health trust and a member of a Regional Development Agency.
Warhurst is a powerful advocate for the landscape and, in her role as deputy chair of the Countryside Agency, has striven to ensure that public intervention always promoted the relevance of landscape to local people. She supported the Landscape Character Assessment of England and always encouraged improvements to the accessibility of the countryside to ordinary people. She constantly drew reference to the benefits of health and wellbeing long before it became a national policy.
An outstanding example of her practical approach to connecting people with the local landscape is the work she has done in her home town of Todmorden when she co-founded the Incredible Edible project. This was a community based project that transformed unused local green spaces into food producing places.
In 2005 Warhurst was awarded the CBE in recognition of her services to the environment.
